Suggestions by the Christie Administration that it may need to borrow an additional $100 to $200 million due to unaccounted for expenses is at best incredulous and at worse an act of absolute deception. Members of the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Assembly should conduct an immediate investigation into this claim. By its suggestion, the Christie Administration is either saying that it was so incompetent in preparing the 2012/2013 Budget to have missed as much as $200 million in expenditure that the entire budget should now be held suspect; or that it has been so reckless in managing the expenditure of the country that it now requires as much as $200 million in additional borrowings to compensate for this recklessness.
Prime Minister Perry Christie, when he came to office in 2002 the first time, complained that the decision by his successor to call election in May was inappropriate due to the fact that the Budget was also presented in that month and did not allow time for proper preparation. Five years later, not only did then Prime Minster Christie call election in May of 2007, he called election on the exact same day his predecessor did, May 2nd, 2007. When the FNM came to office in May 2007, it did not whine about the period of time it had to prepare the Budget, rather, we went to work and prepared a budget we called our own. It is share tomfoolery for the Christie administration to cry about not having time, as the same bureaucrats who run the nation’s affairs from day to day in the Ministry of Finance are there now and could and should give advice about what expenses exist and must be accounted for. This is basic budgeting and to say that one did not have enough time to account of all expenses, particularly one as large as the Critical Care Block of the Princess Margaret hospital, wreaks of incompetence or something worse.
Speaking about the Critical Care Block, it is a project of the Public Hospital’s Authority that is being funded by the RoyalBank of The Bahamas through a loan that the Government has to service on a monthly basis. The suggestion that that its $50 million expenditure was not accounted for and money must now be borrowed to finance it this year is untrue because the money to build the hospital has already been borrowed from the Royal Bank of Canada, guaranteed by the Government of The Bahamas and approved by the House of Assembly. As for the outfitting of the Critical Care Block, it was the Ingraham Administration’s intention not to borrow any money for that but to fund the same through the Medical Infrastructure Fund of the National Insurance Board which was created for that purpose; the same Fund that we were going to use to finance the mini-hospital in Abaco and the Exuma and which the Christie Administration would use to finance the mini-hospital it said it would construct in Eleuthera. Given this then, how could the fiscal advisor in the Ministry of Finance, James Smith, say that the Critical Care Block is an example of a project for which prior expenditure was not accounted and for which additional borrowings would be required this fiscal year?
Quite frankly, it is embarrassing that members of the Government or their operatives should speak of the need to “eye ball” expenditure commitments of the Government as such a notion simply defies logic and laughs in the face of established processes in the Ministry of Finance in particular but the Government of The Bahamas in general. Expenditure commitments of the Government, especially as they relate to major approved projects are documented, recorded and only funded to the extent that they comply with the Financial Administration and Audit Act and other relevant laws. The Treasury of The Bahamas could not fund such commitments without these established procedures being followed. It is shameful for the Government of The Bahamas to admit to the world that it overlooked as much as $200 million in expenditure because the Minister of Finance, or the Minister of State for Finance or some fiscal advisor said he or they did not “eye ball” the same. The Bahamas looks to the world like a banana republic. This is not becoming The Bahamas in the 21st Century, especially in the face of down grading.
Members of the Public Accounts Committee should immediately demand a detailed accounting by the Government of the items requiring additional funding of up to $200 million. It should also require an explanation by the Government as to how it could miss these expense items in its preparation of the 2012/2013 Budget. It should also require the Government to give account for the total sum of money expended to date on hiring new employees, inclusive of the salaries of those employees; an itemized listing of all contracts signed since the May 7th, 2012 elections and the cost of those contracts; a cash disbursement schedule for all major projects being undertaken by the Government, such as the Critical Care Block; the extent of travel by members of the Government since May 7th, 2012 and the cost of that travel; a detailed listing of all new vehicles acquired since May 7th, 2012 and the cost of those vehicles; the difference in cost to operate the current cabinet compared to the last cabinet; the cost of the Urban Renewal Programme in the pushing down of bushes and houses; and the cost of hiring a consultant on the National Lottery who did not give a report.
This matter should be treated as a matter is great urgency, as recent statements by the Minister of State for Finance and now one of the fiscal advisors in the Government, James Smith can have serious repercussions both at home and abroad. In the absence of any clear and definitive plans for growing the economy, containing the fiscal leakage and enhancing the country’s fiscal regime, there is great cause for alarm from these recent utterances.
